DAILY MAGAZINE

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said that the U.S. will boost its purchases of domestic farm products for humanitarian aid in an effort to offset lost demand from China as trade tensions flare between the nations.

Trump said on Twitter on Friday that the U.S. will use its money from the tariffs to buy American agricultural products "in larger amounts than China ever did" and send it to "poor & starving countries" for humanitarian aid. The president indicated potential purchases of $15 billion from farmers. Soybean and grain futures held mostly steady after the announcements, while industry groups opposed Trump's additional U.S. tariffs on China.

"In the meantime we will continue to negotiate with China in the hopes that they do not again try to redo deal!" Trump said on Twitter. "Our farmers will do better, faster and starving nations can now be helped."

Soybean and grain futures plunged this week as U.S. trade talks faltered with China, the world's top oilseed buyer, and the Asian nation vowed retaliation as the U.S. boosted tariffs on $200 billion in goods. On the Chicago Board of Trade, soybean, corn and wheat futures for July delivery were little changed at 10:22 a.m. local time.

"We have heard and believed the president when he says he supports farmers, but we'd like the president to hear us and believe what we are saying about the real-life consequences to our farms and families as this trade war drags on," Davie Stephens, a soybean grower from Clinton, Kentucky, and president of the American Soybean Association, said in a statement.

The soybean group joined the National Corn Growers Association and the National Association of Wheat Growers in a joint statement.

"These additional tariffs will continue to put a strain on our export markets and threaten many decades worth of market development," Ben Scholz, a Texas wheat farmer and president of the wheat group, said in the statement.

In the 2017 fiscal year, the Agency for International Development gave 3.12 million tons of foreign food aid valued at $3.62 billion, according to a report.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in a tweet said that while China may backtrack, Trump is "steadfast in his support for U.S. farmers" and that he directed the USDA "to work on a plan quickly." Perdue also said he was in Japan for trade discussions with the fourth-largest consumer of U.S. agricultural products.

In 2018, the U.S. administration said it would deliver as much as $12 billion to farmers after Beijing slapped retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agricultural products.

Last month, the the World Trade Organization ruled that China didn't follow proper procedures when it imposed trade restrictions on agricultural imports.

(An earlier version of this story corrected the dollar amount in the eighth paragraph.)

In another display of Executive Time in action, Donald Trump today blared back out on the field of the NFL and race relations to condemn New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees for apparently changing his mind on fellow players taking a knee in protest. After already slobbering all over the memory of George Floyd and […]

You really can believe your own eyes.A reporter from the Washington D.C. TV station WUSA 9 shared images on Twitter of tear gas canisters he and a colleague collected from near the White House on Monday-contradicting claims from the White House and U.S. Park Police that authorities did not deploy the weapon against peaceful protesters clear the way for President Donald Trump's photo-op.The photographs show spent CM Spede Heat CS and CM Skat Shell OC short-range rounds, both produced by the firm Defense Technology "as a crowd management tool for the rapid and broad deployment of chemical agent," as described on the company's website. While "OC" stands for oleoresin capsicum, a...

President Donald Trump is facing the bleakest outlook for his reelection bid so far, with his polling numbers plunging in both public and private surveys and his campaign beginning to worry about his standing in states like Ohio and Iowa that he carried by wide margins four years ago.The Trump campaign has recently undertaken a multimillion-dollar advertising effort in those two states as well as in Arizona in hopes of improving his standing while also shaking up his political operation and turning new attention to states like Georgia that were once considered reliably Republican. In private, Trump has expressed concern that his campaign is not battle-ready for the general election, while...

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *